


The Eternal Muddle Service

by queen_ypolita



Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-03
Updated: 2014-05-03
Packaged: 2018-01-21 19:38:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1561676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queen_ypolita/pseuds/queen_ypolita
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From the first day onwards, Nurse Sims finds herself going through muddles when the nurses settle into day-to-day routines and deal with the Matron.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Eternal Muddle Service

**Author's Note:**

  * For [greerwatson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greerwatson/gifts).



> Thanks for trueriver for betaing!

The bus taking them from the meeting place to the EMS hospital site was buzzing softly with conversations between nurses seated next to each other—introductions and work histories and mentions of friends and colleagues. Nurse Sims introduced herself to the nurse next to her—Nurse Elliott, and it was a very young-looking Nurse Adrian across the aisle—and by the time they had arrived at the EMS hospital she had discovered that Nurse Elliott had trained with Nurse Collins in Bristol, after which Nurse Collins had moved to Southampton where she had been working at the same time as Nurse Sims a few years ago. Southampton, of course, was only one of the many hospitals Nurse Sims had worked at over the years: she had never fancied staying put anywhere for too long. After a year or two she had always found a new position somewhere else. Like this new position here: when she had heard about the EMS vacancies she had just been starting to think about moving on.

The bus ride didn't take very long, and soon they were getting off. Nurse Sims gathered her bags and adjusted her hat, and followed Nurse Elliott out. 

They were greeted by a fresh-faced young Corporal who introduced himself breathlessly and immediately launched into an enthusiastic speech about what had been achieved at the site in the past few days with the EMS hospital being erected. Nurse Sims let his words wash over her, adjusted the handles of her travel bag which were digging into her palm. 

There was a hustle of activity around the wooden huts, but it all seemed very orderly and organised. The smell of newly-sawn wood wafted in the late May air. It was very different from the brick-built Victorian monstrosity of a hospital she had been working at until recently, and also very different from the white and gleaming modern purpose-built hospital before that. This was going to be something else entirely. They would have today and tomorrow morning for getting settled and making sure that everything in the newly-erected wards was ready for their first patients to arrive tomorrow afternoon. 

Hearing Matron's voice cut through the young man’s stream of words, she tuned back into what was being said. 

"Thank you, Corporal. If you could show us into our accommodation first, and then show us the site." 

It was a good idea, Nurse Sims thought. They could all rid themselves of their bags and get changed into their uniforms and start work. But the young Corporal seemed flustered all of a sudden. 

"Your accommodation?"

"Yes, the nurses' quarters." 

"Let me have a quick word with my superior officer," the young Corporal stammered and hastily withdrew. It wasn't a promising start and when Nurse Sims glanced at the Matron she thought that the Matron looked unsettled for a moment before schooling her expression into something more neutral.

The young Corporal returned shortly to fetch the Matron to meet his superior officer in the office tent. 

"Perhaps they forgot to build the nurses' quarters," Nurse Elliott muttered to Nurse Sims. She nodded; that seemed to be the most obvious explanation. What a muddle it was already, and they hadn’t been here for more than five minutes. 

The Matron and the Corporal returned a few minutes later. She looked clearly ruffled now and even the young Corporal's incessant flow of words seemed temporarily checked. 

"Let's get settled now, everybody," the Matron said. "We are taking over two wards for our accommodation." Nurse Elliott’s guess had been correct then, it seemed. The Corporal led them led them in to one of the wards. They entered what was laid out as a ward, with hospital beds and small lockers next to each bed and a Sister's desk at one end. The Corporal led half of the group through to the next ward. 

Nurse Sims put her bag down next to one of the beds. It was as basic as one would expect from an EMS ward, but it was time to get changed and get to work. 

* * *

Later that first day, Nurse Sims found herself in the store room with Sister Cumberland, taking stock of everything that had been ordered for the hospital, delivered and setting things out on the shelves. 

"Have you seen any wide bandages?" Sister asked. "According to the list, we should have some."

She looked up from the box she had just opened. "No. They could be in one of the other boxes. Where do you want the slings?"

"Second shelf from the top please, Nurse." She nodded and reached up. 

"No, Nurse, those should go on the other shelf, next to the gauze," the Matron's voice interrupted behind her back.

"Yes, Matron," she replied and turned to put the slings where the Matron had wanted them. 

The Matron watched over their work in silence for a few more minutes, and then left them to it. Once she had gone, Sister Cumberland looked up from her list. "That was petty. Can you move the slings back where I planned to have them? It's not going to be her trying to find the most-used things at the back or high up most of the time if we leave them there."

She moved the slings again, and turned her attention back to the box and shelving. 

* * *

The sisters had a meeting with the Matron to set out duty patterns and ward assignments later in the day. Nurse Sims had told Sister Cumberland she would be happy to take the night duty, and when the sisters came back, that was the shift she was assigned to. She had always quite liked night duty, with its own rhythms, mostly sleeping patients and the possibility of something unexpected lurking round the corner at any moment. 

After patients started arriving, the first few nights were busy with restless men in pain or distress, many of the them recovering from serious operations. There wasn't enough space on the wards to separate the restless ones into side wards: they only had one side ward, which meant only the most serious cases went there, leaving several others on the main ward. Many nights the one or two distressed ones kept waking up everybody else, and leaving her running around trying to get them settled again. She usually brought her knitting to give her hands something to do in the calm of the night, assuming there wasn't any hospital mending to do, but during the first week of night duty she was never sitting down long enough to pick the knitting up. In the mornings, when she sat down for her post-duty meal with the other night nurses, they were all too tired to be sociable and the mealtimes mostly passed on in silence. 

Sleeping was becoming a problem for her. Getting enough sleep during the day when one was on night duty was always a challenge, and even more so now that the nurses' quarters were basically a dormitory. Nurse Sims had brought her ear plugs and an eye mask and had plenty of practice in sleeping during the day, but it was difficult with day nurses coming in during their off-duty times, to get changed, or to collect personal belongings, or if they wanted to spend some time on their own. Even the barest, most inhospitable and impersonal tiny room in a draughty nurses' block would now have felt like a rare luxury.

Within two weeks, the accommodation situation had become intolerable to everybody. Nurses felt they were on-duty all the time as they were sharing their quarters with the sisters. Night nurses struggled to get enough sleep to function. The Matron had been found quarters in the office hut, so she wasn't suffering with the rest of them. Even worse, she had dismissed even reasonable complaints at first without attempting to find a compromise, so everything came to a point when all the nurses and sisters gathered to resolve the situation on their own. It involved moving sisters into to the side wards, which until now had mostly served as storage space, and using screens to create partitions for the night nurses at the end furthest away from the door into the ward. It wasn't ideal, but it was better than the original arrangement. 

* * *

It had been clear to everybody on the first day that the Matron had bitten off more than she could chew when she had accepted her promotion. It seemed she felt it was her business to leave her mark on everything, whether it was the arrangement of things in the store rooms, the alignment of beds in the wards, or the state of the patients' uniforms when lying on their beds. As Nurse Elliott got into the habit of pointing out at every possible occasion, it made one wonder if the Matron had ever worked in a busy hospital where no one person could possibly keep track of everything, or if all the patients at her old nursing home had been too frail to move a muscle without assistance. Night duty meant Nurse Sims rarely had to deal with the Matron in person, but she heard plenty of gossip at meals—stories about the afternoon when the Matron had made Nurse Adrian straighten Barker's bed no fewer than four times, the morning when Nurse Elliott and Sister Cumberland had rearranged new stocks in the store rooms twice until a crisis in the ward called them away, much to the Matron’s displeasure, and the morning when the Matron had tried to spruce up the men in Ward D before Major Ferguson's round because they looked too scruffy, with very little effect except a sour atmosphere on the ward for the rest of the day. Many of the nurses had adopted the strategy of saying "Yes, Matron" to the petty requests and reprimands and doing things the way they judged best behind the Matron's back. Some seethed quietly at the time and saved their venom for mealtimes. 

But the Matron's scrutiny of the nurses and nursing work was nothing compared to the close eye she kept on the ward maids who did most of the cleaning and laundry, or the kitchen superintendent and kitchen maids who looked after food supplies and meals. Ward maids were constantly told go back and mop the floor again. The kitchen superintendent regularly found the Matron looking through her order lists and criticising her meal plans. 

Everyone expected either situation to reach the boiling point very soon, and Nurse Sims overheard some of the men making bets about whether it was the maids who walked out first, or Mrs Green. Personally, if she had been the betting type, Nurse Sims would have put her money on Mrs Green. She certainly wasn't green: she was very good at her job, her kitchen assistants clearly liked her, and apart from when the Matron was around, she always had a smile and a few kind words for everyone, staff and patients alike. 

The crisis in the kitchen came on a Sunday. When Nurse Sims returned from the church—she went every Sunday morning—the nurses' quarters were buzzing with the gossip. No one seemed to know exactly what it was that the Matron had said, or done, but Mrs Green had finally ordered her out of her kitchen. Once the Matron had made her exit, Mrs Green had packed her bags and the car she had ordered came to collect her. She left her resignation letter on her desk, but no other messages, and no instructions for the kitchen staff. As Mrs Green had usually spent her Sunday mornings preparing dinner when the kitchen assistants went to church, there was the prospect of no dinner. Eventually, the kitchen assistants managed it, with bad grace, upset with the Matron. A new superintendent arrived on Tuesday, forewarned, and succeeded in living with the Matron's interference, which ceased for a while after Mrs Green's departure, but resumed soon enough. 

* * *

As weeks went by, the kitchen troubles were mostly forgotten, except as a story to be dusted off whenever somebody wanted to grumble about the eternal muddles that the hospital seemed destined to suffer. Despite the Matron's careful watch over the store rooms they were constantly running out this-or-that essential item and the patients, however unconsciously, continued to resists her attempts at instill a sense of uniformity and adherence to her standards. No longer as new and gleaming, the wards were beginning to show signs of having seen some good honest hospital use, the wooden huts housing the hospital had acquired a more weathered look, and paths trodden around the site showed where work and leisure had taken place. Routines had become so well established that there was a sense of relaxation around the site when nurses and other staff went about their work. Nurses were feeling more settled and learned how to make the most of their off-duty time in the nearest town, The patients were no longer just unwashed bodies bleeding on new white sheets, they had names, histories and routes to recovery and eventual discharge. 

While everything else seemed to rumble along nicely, the maids' attitudes worsened as time went by, but it still took everybody by surprise that they walked out. There was no single big row, cleaning and laundry had been completed day after day, frequently not to the Matron’s exacting but widely subjective and inconsistent standards, but it had always been done. But the maids were local girls whose friends in the village had been moving to towns in search of more exciting and better-paid work than mopping hospital floors, making beds or washing endless sheets. If nurses and patients had, over time, found themselves more settled at the hospital, the opposite had been true of the maids. 

Being in bed during the day meant that Nurse Sims missed the excitement at the time, but there was plenty to talk about afterwards: what the maids had said, what the Matron had done, how she had reacted to the sight of the maids leaving. Once the events had been discussed into exhaustion, the main question was where the hospital would find new maids. It was obvious that there were no unlimited numbers of local girls with no other occupation to replace the ones who had left. In the meantime, it was all hands on deck with nurses’ times having to stretch to mopping floors, trying to stay on top of the laundry, and pushing walking patients to do some of the fetching and carrying. It was even harder work than usual, but it made her feel she had made the right choice in coming here where you never knew what would happen next and made do with what you had to muddle through it all.


End file.
